RON’S BEARD VS. THEY WILL KILL YOU

A full-time job with its own apartment? It sounds like a deal to kill for, but is it too good to be true? Ron’s beard is all-in on THEY WILL KILL YOU, a killer action-horror splatterfest.

THEY WILL KILL YOU (2026)

A woman takes a job as a housekeeper in a NYC high-rise, unaware of the building’s history of disappearances. She soon realizes the community is shrouded in mystery.

Directed by: Kirill Sokolov

Written by: Kirill Sokolov and Alex Litvak

Starring: Zazie Beetz, Myha’la, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, and Patricia Arquette

Run Time: 94 minutes

Kirill Sokolov wears his influences openly. From the very opening frames of his English-language debut, it’s pretty clear what kind of movies this guy likes. Sam Raimi, Park Chan-wook, Sergio Leone, and most blatantly of all, Quentin Tarantino. Sokolov has clearly never met a brutal action sequence he doesn’t love, and he pours every bit of his influences and obsessions into the compact 94 minute run-time of THEY WILL KILL YOU.

The movie is sold as a horror film, but aside from the opening moments, there’s very little horror trappings in the traditional sense. It’s more akin to a Raimi-style fun-house dark ride. Sure, there’s scary stuff, but the overall tone of the thing is more wild entertainment than going for the jugular horror. That said, the amount of gore and bodily dismemberment in THEY WILL KILL YOU is more than enough to satisfy all but the most bloodthirsty of gorehounds, with the added benefit that a great deal of the splatter is actually practical effects rather than the CGI so common today.

That alone makes the film worth seeing; the VIrgil is a series of massive practical sets. The fight sequences are done with practical weapons and real stunt performers, the effects are mostly practical (including puppets and miniatures) with a little CGI sweetening, and the many severed limbs in the film are practical composite shots. Even the shots that are fully CGI were engineered to look like classic 1980’s special effects in an attempt to achieve the tone Sokolov is attempting to create. The special effects by visual effects supervisor Marc Smith and the team at Crafty Apes is one of the highlights of the movie.

Another highlight is the sheer intensity brought by the second unit team, including stunt coordinator Kerry Gregg and fight coordinator Russ McCarroll, go balls-out with the set pieces. If there are ways to mangle a human body on screen that aren’t in this movie, I’d be very surprised. Any way you might think of someone getting brutalized from in an EVIL DEAD movie appears in THEY WILL KILL YOU, with the energy and creativity you’d expect from someone so heavily inspired by Raimi and the technical prowess you’d expect from someone so inspired by Quentin Tarantino and his inspirations. Spray EVIL DEAD 2 blood all over ONE-ARMED BOXER, MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTINE, and DEATH WISH 3, and you’re getting something approaching the general feel of THEY WILL KILL YOU’s set pieces. Every fight sequence has a punchline, a fist-pump, or a grimace built in, and that energy and confidence permeates the film. Very few scenes pass without something to make the viewer react in some way.

The movies I’ve mentioned have an iconic star at the center. Bruce Campbell made his name off of the EVIL DEAD series; by EVIL DEAD 2, he’s the quippy, slapstick machine we know and love. ONE-ARMED BOXER and GUILLOTINE’s Jimmy Wang Yu was one of the biggest Hong Kong stars of the 70s, paving the way for none other than Bruce Lee with his blend of charisma and fighting prowess with the first kung-fu mega-hit THE CHINESE BOXER. DEATH WISH 3 has the grizzled, mustached charm of Charles Bronson at the height of his Golan/Globus period, one of the more bankable stars in the Cannon stable.

And THEY WILL KILL YOU has Zazie Beetz.

THEY WILL KILL YOU has some great character performances. Patricia Arquette is a legend from a legendary acting family. The choice of an Irish accent is an interesting one, particularly when tied to the character’s history and the Virgil’s history, but it works. Heather Graham is doing her very best Drew Barrymore impression, and she’s a blast when she’s given physical comedy. Tom Felton is playing a version of the character he’s been playing since he was 9 years old; that’s not a slight on him, he’s good at playing a douchebag who is both pathetic and funny while still somehow being threatening.

But Zazie Beetz stands out among her peers, just based off the pure physicality she puts on screen. She powers her way through dialog (in spite of a forgettable script) and fight scenes like she’s wielding a machete even when she’s not; she doesn’t look like a typical action heroine, but she looks like a real-life person you wouldn’t want to mess with because she looks dangerous even when she’s trying to look meek. She doesn’t look as menacing as a Bronson and she’s not as quippy as a Campbell, but she’s her own thing and she’s difficult to look away from because of how strong her choices are and how commanding her presence is. Samara Weaving should break out of the horror genre with her performance in CAROLINA CAROLINE; Zazie Beetz should break into the horror genre with her performance here, and in a just world, she becomes a new horror hero.

By turns funny and brutal, THEY WILL KILL YOU is one of those movies where it’s going to be hard to look away from the screen for fear of missing something, from a flaming axe to an exploding head. Like any good thrill ride, there’s not a question about where things are going (because they all run on rails) but plenty of fun twists, turns, and loops getting there. Execution matters in horror films, and THEY WILL KILL YOU wears a black hood and stands by the gallows. It’s a killer movie.

Ron Hogan is a writer, podcaster, gadabout, and raconteur from Louisville, Kentucky. You can read his written works at Den of Geek, Film Stories, and at several magazines and sites that no longer exist. You can hear his voice (and potentially see his magnificent beard) on the Film Strip Podcast.

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